A ROAD less than a mile long that links the centre of Cardiff with Cardiff Bay will cost taxpayers as much as £189m over 25 years, it has been revealed.

Lloyd George Avenue opened 11 years ago and was built under the controversial Private Finance Initiative, which sees private developers paid money over an extended period for capital projects they have funded and delivered.

The full cost of the road, together with associated shops and homes, has been disclosed to South Wales Central Plaid Cymru AM Leanne Wood, who called on the Welsh Government to give a firm commitment to extend a ban on PFIs in the Welsh NHS across all devolved areas of spending.

The Lloyd George Avenue PFI scheme involved the construction of a dual carriageway including Callaghan Square, maintenance of Lloyd George Avenue and the highway around Callaghan Square for 25 years and the provision ofŠ not less than 365,000 sq ft of commercial development and 350 homes.

But Treasury figures obtained by Ms Wood show that the final bill to the taxpayer will amount to £188.8m. The sum to be paid back annually was originally £5.18m a year, subject to indexation, over 25 years.

The current annual payment is £7,201,138, according to a Freedom of Information response.

Cardiff council told Ms Wood the original cost of the project was £56.63m. In addition the developers have maintenance costs of £19.6m and operating costs of £7.86m, making a total of just more than £84m. Maintenance will revert to Cardiff council in 2025.

The original PFI agreement was made between the former Cardiff Bay Development Corporation and a consortium called City Link, whose shareholders included Societe Generale and MEPC.

Ms Wood said: “These figures on the Lloyd George Avenue scheme illustrate clearly the folly of PFI schemes. Here we have a project which will cost almost £189m – the private investors will make a huge multi-million pound profit, while the taxpayers pick up the bill.

“PFI is not affordable and just shifts millions of pounds of debt to future generations and that is wrong. The Welsh Government must resist this false economy and commit not to carrying out any further PFIs in the future. They are unsustainable.”

Earlier this year, Ms Wood wrote to First Minister Carwyn Jones, who told her the Welsh Government was “actively pressing the UK Government urgently to allow the Welsh Government to borrow to finance capital investment”.

Mr Jones said: “And, although ancillary to securing borrowing ability, we are also committed to exploring other innovative and collaborative means to raise finance for investment in infrastructure in ways which provide value for money.”

Plaid Cymru local government spokesman Rhodri Glyn Thomas has called on the Welsh Government to adopt new funding methods for public infrastructure projects after information was disclosed showing that local authorities in Wales will pay almost £1.4bn in PFI contracts, representing more than £40m a year being diverted from public services.

Plaid’s “Build4Wales” proposal would create a not-for-distributable-profit company to create up to 50,000 jobs by investing as much as £500m in building new schools, hospitals and roads, creating thousands of jobs, he claims.

A Welsh Government spokesman said: “Our policy on the use of old fashioned, discredited PFI is clear – we don’t do it.

“We are however exploring the use of other innovative forms of investment in public infrastructure in Wales to maximise the impact of our drastically reduced capital budget.

“We are also seeking borrowing powers in this development, which are informing part of our inter-governmental talks. This includes working with the private sector to manage assets and raise capital for investment in major projects.

“The Lloyd George Avenue scheme was built by the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation, which was established by the [Conservative] UK Government in 1987.”